Young Jake (Asa Butterfield) is as good as invisible. His teenage schoolmates barely even acknowledge him (aside from the occasional taunt), his dull part-time job at the local supermarket is certainly doing his social life no favours, and to make things worse, his grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp) is growing ever more erratic by the day, seemingly verging on full senility. This last fact is the most painful as far as Jake is concerned; Abe had always been the one spot of colour in his otherwise drab life, telling outrageous stories about the places he had been to, the people he had met—none more outrageous than his reminiscences of an orphanage off the coast of Wales where he claimed to have spent some time. The establishment, according to him, housed a group of children with “peculiar” abilities, cared for by a certain Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), a powerful shape-shifter herself. But while Jake had believed Abe’s tales as a child, the older he had gotten, the more he had begun to question his grandfather’s grasp on reality.

However, a day comes that changes everything, and Jake is soon hard-pressed to separate truth from fiction: Abe has been killed under mysterious circumstances—eyes gouged out, a bizarre-looking entity glimpsed fleeing the scene—and our grieving hero quickly discovers a number of clues left behind by the old man, all seemingly pointing to the aforementioned home. Although not entirely sure the place even really exists, he decides to go looking for it, in the hopes of finding out what really

happened to his grandfather. It proves a long, long journey from his digs

in suburban Florida—both in terms of space and time—and at the end of it, he finally meets the enigmatic Miss Peregrine and her special wards. In entering their fantastical, magical world, Jake not only

comes to understand Abe much better, but also himself; let’s just say he might not be quite as ordinary as previously believed.

Based on Ransom Riggs’ 2011 trilogy of the same name—a series that was apparently built around old vintage photographs collected from various fairs and markets—Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is the sort of project that would seem just up director Tim Burton’s alley. There couldn’t have been a better fit if Riggs had written the books solely with Burton’s eventual procurement in mind. As is his wont, the director does infuse the story with his unique sensibility—it’s a style and tone that we’ve come to easily recognise over the years, a penchant for the weird, the wacky and the downright eerie. But, like many of his more recent outings, the weirdness and wackiness here feel superficial, punched in for decorative purposes rather than emerging organically from the narrative. Part of the problem are the generic blockbuster-y attributes that have been allowed to intrude and that render the entire experience rather predictable. Coming from a man whose name was once synonymous with the odd and the unexpected, this is doubly disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong, there is evidence aplenty in the film of Burton’s well-known attention to the smallest of visual elements, and there are a number of stunners here, credit for which also goes to impressive work by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. The “home” itself is a gothic wonderland, rooms decked out in aged furniture, textiles and knickknacks, lit just enough to lay bare the work that has gone into the details, but still maintaining a necessary air of shadowed mystery—not to mention the grounds, with sculpted shrubbery harkening back to the old Scissorhands days. A few of the set-pieces have been terrifically choreographed, particularly ones employing stop-motion animation, such as a Frankenstein-doll fight and a battle with skeletons towards the end of the film. There are other memorable images scattered throughout, not least one featuring our young hero walking on the beach as a girl floats gently behind him like a kite, tethered to him by rope. And this being Burton, the grotesque is never too far away—a scene where a group of evildoers are feasting on a plate of eyeballs is one such instance, and potentially one that might have the kiddies gagging.

All this, however, amounts to little more than ornamentation when the story itself is so basic, so ridden with plotholes and so surprisingly derivative. One frequently feels like one is watching a gothic remake of the X-Men at times during the film—although perhaps not all that shocking considering the screenwriter Jane Goldman had co-written the screenplay for one of the X-Men films

and worked on the story for another—and there are a host of other

obvious influences besides, from Harry Potter to Burton’s own

Big Fish, to be found here. With the result that the film actually has more in common with the so-formulaic-as-to-be-damn-near-indistinguishable superhero fare of the present day rather than with Burton’s one-time distinctive vision.

In focusing too much on the production design and trying to dial up the action sequences to abide by blockbuster standards—and the reams and reams of exposition and explanation needed to unpack the unnecessarily convoluted nature of this world—Miss Peregrine’s Home ends up giving short shrift to character development, and therein lies the real tragedy. Fascinating though such characters as a boy who can project visions of the future onto a screen, a girl lighter than air, another who can create fire with the merest of touches, and yet another who can command trees and vines to move and grow as she pleases, might sound, the fact is, they barely even register; we never truly get to know these people, to understand how they came to be where they are or what they might be feeling—something that applies to the lead

as well, who, despite enjoying more screen time than any of the others,

is just as ill-sketched. That deprives the film of any potential emotional resonance, and renders the spooky antics hollow.

It also doesn’t help that Butterfield, who you’ll remember as a young tot in Hugo and Nanny McPhee, and later on in Ender’s Game, still hasn’t gained the sort of acting heft necessary for a role like this, and practically blends into the background at times—kind of the point as the “normal” one here, I know, but you get the impression that persistent blank expression isn’t entirely scripted. This means his romance with one of the peculiars (Ella Purnell) is more than a little stiff. Sure, the film packs in cameos by various performers, including Judi Dench, Allison Janney and Rupert Everett, but they’ve been given very little to do and very little time to do it in. Thank heavens, then, for Green, whom we don’t get to see as often as we’d like, but who nonetheless carries the film—like her titular character, the actress is the rock of this patchy enterprise.

If the too-neat, too-twee ending is anything to go by, Miss Peregrine’s chapter has been closed and that’s that. But the franchise-mania of present times suggests we should expect more instalments in the days to come, and Riggs’ certainly has more material to offer. But if Burton is to take up the helm again next time, I do hope he remembers that it’s not enough to create a pretty landscape and parade the oddballs around like props—without convincing personalities, world-building will prove an exercise in futility.